


A Slick of Black Ice

by After_Baker_Street



Series: Back Together Again [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Disclosure, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Love, M/M, Nightmares, PTSD, Post Reichenbach, Psychological Trauma, Sexual Abuse, casework
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:11:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/After_Baker_Street/pseuds/After_Baker_Street
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The resolution of the previous chapter's case, plus a revelation John didn't see coming.</p><p>THIS SECTION NEEDS MAJOR TRIGGER WARNINGS: Sexual abuse of a minor, death of a minor, PTSD, nightmares</p><p>Just a quick update: This fic will have updates, but my work schedule is very busy for late summer so they will be slow in coming. Thanks for being patient <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Slick of Black Ice

The press exploded when child pornography was found on the school security guard’s home computer. Wilson had set off too many alarm bells in his interviews, the detectives didn’t have to be especially clever to finally cotton on that things weren’t right with him. Everything moved especially fast after that, they’d booked him before they even matched the fibres on his clothes with those on our victim. His face was plastered on every tabloid in the city. He even admitted to sexually assaulting the boy.

But he would not admit to killing him.

Sherlock threw the remote at the television when the guard’s face was shown on the news.

“They’re missing it!” he shouted over his shoulder at me. “Fools!” he said, punctuating the air before I sat beside him on the sofa. He startled at my approach but quickly recovered. People tend to head in the other direction when Sherlock’s hackles are raised.

I reached for his wrist, just grabbing on to the cuff of his shirt. I was tugging it towards me, watching the play of emotions across his face. He hides so little from me now. He turns to me, nearly begging, “they’re missing it, John. There’s more.”

“I know,” I said, though I did not see what he saw. With cases like this, that he put his whole energy into, he often made leaps that felt very much like intuition to me. He insisted he was picking up on subtle clues, that he could explain his deductions in minute detail. Normally, he could. But sometimes he settled with “something’s not right” and it rankled at him. He looked as tired as I felt, the excitement of the case having long since faded as we went day after day without access to the crime scene or witnesses. He worried at the same set of mismatched, incomplete clues we’d had for what felt like ages.

I pulled him close, and with a soft sigh, he leaned against me. Here, but not really here.

“Let’s have dinner. I’m hungry, are you?”

His head is tucked beneath my chin, but I can practically feel his eyes rolling back in his head.

“I never eat when...”

“Yes,” I interrupted, “but you’re not on a case now.”

He complains a little more, I listen, things go on as before. Except now I have him here, my fingers wound in dark curls, and the venom in his voice slowly disappears. Soon, we’re laughing and he’s teasing me, this time playfully.

We end up making dinner together, in the fading amber twilight. We turned on the radio, Sherlock criticized the preciseness of my julienning of the vegetables. Laughing, I told him “Never criticize the man with the knife.” Bright eyes sparkling, he says he’s not afraid of me, comes up behind me, arms around me. Slides his hands over mine, directing me with the knife. Purring instructions in my ear that I can’t begin to hear because his lips brush my skin, slip down my neck.

Making no attempt to conceal a shiver, I pretend I can’t hear him, ignore his fingers brushing against mine, the wet surprise of his tongue tracing the edge of my earlobe.

“Are you ignoring me, John? I might be forced to do something...drastic.” His words low and sweet as honey and thunder. Teasing in the most wicked way, he begins to move his hips, just a slight twist along with the silly pop music I’ve got playing. He starts to hum, and I can feel it against me more than I can hear it.

“You’re not singing along because you can’t possibly know the words.”

He gives a small noise of agreement, lips pressed against the back of my neck, nearly at my hairline. The puff of warm breath along my skin as he whispers, “Melodies are so...mmm...predictable, John.”

And I give in, just a bit, tilt my head back until he can kiss the side of my throat. Everything is him; I’m wrapped up in him. The scent of something warm and dark, the bite of citrus beneath. I don’t have the same sense of smell he does, but he reminded me of wintergreen, copper, gunpowder, that strangely green scent when you tear apart a leaf. Alive. So alive.

Letting go of my hands, he wraps me tight in his arms. One hand wanders up, pushing me against him gently, fingers wrapping around my shoulder. The other hand slipping low across my waist. All whilst rocking his hips slowly into me.

“You’re a terrible dancer,” I gasp.

“Hmm, am not.”

I set down the knife and lose myself to the embrace.

Fear flickered through joy. I’m familiar with this honeymoon phase between breakdowns, with the tenuous peace between explosions. You walk on eggshells, but you know soon enough, your world will shatter. I know this life; I’m the son and brother of alcoholics. I still chose this. And though I didn’t ask for it, certainly didn’t expect it, he’s changing. Unlocking doors to rooms I didn’t know existed.

I turn to face him, smiling. Sweet slow kisses around our easy laughter. Wrap my arm around his waist and soon we’re dancing awkwardly, like kids at a school dance.

I try to lead and he laughs me off, saying I’m far too short, as if I haven’t danced with plenty of taller partners. He tries to take the lead but I laugh him off as a bossy git. In the end, neither of us lead, we just sway a bit to the music.

I upgrade my assessment from “terrible dancer” to “not completely awful.” He snorts and says it’s only because he hasn’t had the practice I have.

“Oh come off it, it’s not like I’ve gone dancing with many blokes.” That damn eyebrow must have lifted two inches.

“Many?”

“Stop being so literal. Any, then.” A suggestive tilt of the mouth. “And you have?” I continue.

“First time for everything.”

“That’s nice.” I murmur, my eyes catching on his. They’re sparkling and bright grey-blue, catching and reflecting all the light in the room.

“First times can be nice,” he says, “with you.”

And there’s that smile, my smile. Not the smile everyone gets, the smile with a thousand forms. The smile you always think was just for you. The smile that pulls you in, has you working against your will, but somehow never manages to reach his eyes. Watching it, you might feel like you’re on fire, but that smile is all chill emptiness. This is still easy and surprisingly warm, but even when he tries to stop it, it breaks out, past the guard he’s so carefully set. Every time I see that smile, I feel a little kick of victory in my chest.

“Lot of firsts with me, then?” I say, somewhat stupidly, bit lost in that smile.

“Logically, the first time we do anything together is the first time I’ve done it with you. First time I kissed you was the first time we kissed...”

I sigh and interrupt “So literal! Again!” He covers my protest with a kiss, quick and soft.

“Ask me.” he practically growled. “You’ve been dying to ask for ages. Just go on and ask. It’s not like I keep anything from you.”

My thoughts dance by in this order: First, what precisely is he referring to? There are a thousand questions I haven’t asked, won’t ask, don’t know how to ask. The first I think of, and discard is _Did you love me when you were gone? Even then?_ But no, that can’t be right. The second thought is very clear: you don’t keep anything from me? What on Earth...the list of things you keep from me is probably longer than the list you share.

Then I forget to reply, lost in the lovely contradiction of his cheek against mine. Eyebrows and lashes like moth's wings, silken skin, then the pull of bristle and stubble.

"She called me 'The Virgin.'" speaking so low I feel it more than hear it, resonating in our chests pressed close. We’re back on “first times.”

Oh. _Her._

Jealousy taps its spurs against my sides. Before it sets my mind racing, I shut it down. I shrug.

"Figured she was wrong about that, too." He nods, staring straight at me but his eyes are seeing the memory of something else. Flickering over her, naked? Chastise myself a little. There had been ample opportunity there, but to my knowledge he hadn't taken it. I clear my throat and he's back.

"Well, there is something there. If she was goading me or, more likely, Mycroft. Any reference to sex does get a bit awkward around him.”

Hmm. Mycroft can be a priggish wanker, but now it sounds like there's more behind his cruel remarks about sex to Sherlock.

"Talking about sex when family's around is always a bit awkward."

Sherlock turns his head, tension in his shoulders and back.

"No," he says, "because..." he looks for words, eventually settling on waving his hand impatiently.

"Well, you know." A strange tightness to his voice, a sudden pained wince and then his face is blank. I pull away a little so I can see him better.

"What?" More clipped than I'd like, more like a command. Sometimes military habits die hard. And they slip out when I'm under stress.

"What?" I soften to let show a little of the concern I'm feeling.

"Know _what_ , Sherlock?"

The twist of his hips against mine, like a reflex, but before he moves away, he looks down at me, caught in an expression of shock.

"I thought..." he chokes out. Then his face sets, all firm lines. Trembling and taught around his mouth. Behind the mask again. A stranger.

Eyes dangerous and cold, I’ve approached a slick of black ice I never saw coming.

"I assumed you'd guessed by now. That I was...assaulted. Sexually assaulted." Clinical, like he's reading it off a coroner's report. “Repeatedly. I was...at school.” Evidence at a crime scene. And that's what this feels like. I've come along too late to a crime scene grown cold.

“Oh.”

A fluttering, indrawn breath. Mine.

A step back. His. As though for balance. But I see it for what it is. A step away. Wrap my hands around his arms, to hold him. My hands feel too small.

“I’m sorry,” I say in a whisper. Any louder and I might shout, demand answers. _‘Who hurt you?’,_ some posturing, masculine part of me will yell, and I’ll threaten whoever dared touch you. Not helpful.

“I’m sorry.” I repeat as his eyes meet mine for an instant, searching. “Are you alright?” _Watson, you’re an idiot,_ I tell myself and brace for his scathing response. It never comes.

Instead, he leans into me, heavily. Rests his head low on my shoulder. Buries his face in the crook of my neck. When he speaks, his lips move against my skin, his breath warm over me.

“I am now, I think.” As careful as he’s ever been, as uncertain. As unguarded. Wrap him up tight in my arms, as if I could protect him from something that’s already happened. We stay, still in each other’s arms for a few long moments.

Before I told him how much he meant to me, how much I wanted him and loved him, I felt fragile, breakable. I thought I’d need so much. Too much. The surprise of his need staggered me. It was like opening a door to let in a flood. Or maybe a hurricane. Years pent up, with nowhere to go.

“Will you...” my voice breaks. _Get it together, Watson._ “Do you want to tell me?”

A beat of silence.

“I thought...I’d show you?” He shakes his head, light brush of soft curls against the exquisitely sensitive skin of my neck. “But not now.” Stands straight once more, eyes like searchlights, assessing my reactions, feels as though they’re very nearly reading my thoughts. I break the intensity of that look.

“Alright,’ I say, lifting my hands to his face, tilting his head further down. I kiss one side of his jaw, then the other. “I’d kiss your cheek, but you’re too damn tall,” I grumble and his laugh is warm and easy.

We go back to making dinner, or rather, I go back to helping him make dinner. At first, we’re quiet. I’m afraid that what I’ve just learnt will start to tear away at me, to change how I feel somehow. He later tells me he’s thinking the same thing.

I complain his standards for an unpaid sous chef are unbearably high. Patronizingly, he kisses the top of my head, like he’s indulging a child and says that when it comes to me, his standards are always high.

Dinner’s easy. Easier than I reckoned anyway. I find myself unexpectedly emotional, it comes out at strange times. I can’t concentrate on what he’s saying, my eyes will be surprisingly wet, or my left hand will start to tremble. He ignores it, a kindness I do not expect. He also does not return to the case, his attention stays with me.

We pass the night quietly, end up watching telly as peacefully as can be expected. Sherlock insists on making deductions about how the show will go, and I can’t stop myself from being amazed, horrified, annoyed, or laughing, sometimes all at once. We are especially gentle with one another, which is far more of a reach for him than for me. He seeks me out, entwines his long, clever fingers in mine, strokes me wherever he touches me. The night wears on, and he eventually settles against me, curling up on the sofa, head resting on my leg. I’ve no idea how he got there, through some flagrant misuse of furniture and proper seating etiquette, I’m sure, but I’m not going to complain.

I can watch him from this angle, his pale face lit by the flickering light of the television. One hand is curled around my leg, the other is still grasping my hand, and he has drawn our clasped hands to his chest. He looks as vulnerable as a child and it strikes me a bit breathless. Of all things, I did not expect this vulnerability. I suspected that beneath the icy and ill-applied veneer of sociopath was some sort of brokenness, some history of heartbreak and misuse. I had no idea it was so vast, or that he would ever share it with me. I felt honoured in a way I did not understand. I was also grateful. My own loneliness, my brand of distance and brokenness somehow fit perfectly against his, in a strange sort of symbiosis. I don’t know why it surprised me, we were so well suited in so many parts of our lives.

My mind raced, trying to eat itself alive. I felt I could have choked on my guilt. I had seen Sherlock react when things became intimate between us, when we started to connect in a way that was, while loving, explicitly sexual. I felt ill as I tried to recall every encouraging whisper I’d directed his way to try to make him feel comfortable, to try, in some ways, to convince him to be sexual with me. I should have known. The way he shies away from casual touch, his discomfort with obvious advances. They were all clues. And I chalked his behaviour up to the fact that he’s _Sherlock_ and well, Sherlock’s just not like other people.

Christ, I’d have been on cocaine as well. Too much to deal with.

*

We’ve been called off cases before, so I felt ready for Sherlock’s inevitable fit of disappointed sulking. However, this time he continued on with a single-minded doggedness that frankly astonished me. He reached several remarkable conclusions based on terrifically scanty evidence. Unfortunately, they were like many of his deductions - amazing, but ultimately not useful in a practical sense.

The security guard kept insisting he didn’t kill the boy. His impossible story was that Anand was already dead when he violated the boy. We weren’t allowed to see the him in prison; Lestrade regretted it, but we weren’t given access to much evidence at all. The brutal and mysterious murder of a child on school grounds made for an incredibly hot case. Everything was being done by the book, and that book wasn’t written with a consulting detective in mind.

Days passed, stretching into weeks. We took other cases, smaller ones, private dramas Sherlock solved in no time at all. And then he returned to the case of the murdered teen boy. Things between us were quiet. He was in turns distant but apologetic, affectionate and thoughtless, confusing while completely understandable. In short, things were nearly normal.

I would like to say that I didn’t change, because there’s no baseline to track my behavior. A relationship with Sherlock was completely new to me, and yet it often seemed as natural as breathing that he would kiss me when we woke. I spent hours thinking on what I’d learned about him, about his family, his revelation of abuse. I wasn’t surprised, but being confronted with it as I was lead to my own sort of vicarious trauma. There were many nights I walked the streets of London, trying to think of how to talk to him, how to reach him, because I knew he was trying to reach me in his own way. It might have seemed that he was totally different to me now that our relationship had changed, but he wasn’t. I had just suddenly been moved from the audience, albeit the front row, to behind the curtain.

I returned to the flat after one of those long late-night walks to find Sherlock had gone, no note, not a text. Typical. I was settling in for bed when my phone chimed.

_Panoply of evidence ignored by incompetents. - SH_

_Enlighten me. I replied._

_Tomorrow. Exhausted. - SH_

And he was, totally knackered. Something had given way while he was out, but I didn’t know what. He came in, footsteps strangely slow compared to his usual excitement after solving a case. I was practically dying to hear his update, but I fell silent when I saw his face.

He looked pale and somehow frail, even in the armour of his suit and jacket. He looked at me, past me, despite his efforts to keep his attention on me, my face and my eyes. He was somewhere else, and it wasn’t where he wanted to be.

“You alright, then?” I asked as he sort of fumbled taking off his coat. A noncommittal kind of grunt was my reply. He swallowed hard, one hand reaching for the scarf at his throat. He was frozen, eyes flickering over the room, taking it in as though it was the first time he’d seen it. I barely heard the quiet, broken cry from his throat. He seemed surprised when I touched his arm, though he must have seen me move towards him. I recognized the absence that follows a great emotional shock.

A tilt of his head. “John?” I put my hand over his, the one still holding on to the loop of his scarf. He was strung as tightly as a bow, his fingers white-knuckled. My hand over his seemed to unlock some of that tension and he looked down, into my eyes.

There’s some sort of unspoken language between us and I read him as clearly as I ever had. It was bittersweet to take him in my arms, to have him rest his cheek against my forehead. I said nothing, only waited for him to speak. He took a deep, haggard breath.

“I’m so tired.” It was as if speaking somehow tortured him.

“Okay, let’s go to bed.” He nodded, slowly, but did not move. I finally broke the embrace and lead him to his own bedroom.

He removed his clothes mechanically, his movements strange and fitful, in contrast to usual unconscious grace. I slipped between cool sheets but he sat at the edge of the bed, head in his hands. I waited. I am nothing if not patient.

Eventually the involuntary shudder, the shaking of his shoulders. As if shaking something off. Reality, maybe; the past, probably. Finally he turned to look at me. I was struck, as I sometimes was, by his stark and often strange beauty. Pale skin glowing, electric in the low light from the window and bedside lamp, the sharp lines of his face dramatic enough to be etched in glass, a cameo. He was as beautiful to me as anything I had ever dreamt, as exotic and unknowable as the starlit sky. The rest of the time, he was a hopeless, thoughtless git and a giant pain in the arse. I think it was saying something that he usually managed to be both at once.

I thought he would tell me what he discovered, instead he pulled me close, hunched into me and kept readjusting, trying to hold me tighter. The flats of his palms pressed into me, hands working against my skin, face pressed into my back and shoulder. He didn’t seem to be able to touch me enough, to get enough contact.

Finally, he whispered into my hair, “I found them out, John. I knew it.”

Nothing like triumph in his tone. “Hmm?”

“They killed him, the boys. They raped him and killed him. And I proved it tonight.”

He sat up, cross-legged in the bed. I leaned up on my elbows to watch him, to listen. He always needed an audience.

He spoke, hands flying, telling stories of their own.

“It was his lungs, John, of course. That’s where it started. No, that’s where I started. The idiot guard wiped the boy down with bleach after he...well, he took some liberties - but Anand was dead, oh, he was very dead by that time. They completely disregarded the guard’s story, that he found Anand already dead in a cupboard in the storage room. Remember the dust we found on the body, in the hair? Well, it came from the cupboard Wilson pointed out. We matched it to the boy’s clothing after the guard told us where he stashed it. The boy’s trousers had slid across the bottom of the cupboard, the dust got all over him, in his hair.” He stopped, realizing he’d been speaking quickly, that I was struggling to connect the dots.

“The dust, John, the DUST! It was all over his clothes. His hair. It wasn’t in his lungs.”

“Oh! He wasn’t breathing in the cupboard, then?”

“Precisely! We could prove he’d been in the cupboard, and I knew he hadn’t been breathing at the time. But how’d the body get there? And if Wilson was telling the truth, how did he know there was a dead boy in a cupboard?”

“Nothing adds up.” I added, feeling exceptionally dull, and confident Sherlock would correct me in moments.

“No! Everything adds up! The lying, the guard, the boys! Many sex offenders have been victims themselves, and the lying from the boys had a strange quality to it. So I went back to comb through the guard’s effects. Luckily, it was one area the idiotic police let me have access, although their supervision was needlessly intrusive.”

I didn’t envy the poor officer on that job.

“It was there, John. It was all there. He’d put coded entries in his diary. Symbols the Yard hadn’t cracked, honestly, I don’t think they tried. I compared it against the boys’ diaries. Or rather, what their parents had reported as their schedules. And I found that every single time Wilson had written a certain symbol, Toby had been late home from school.”

He smiled a bit, preening.

“It’s surprisingly easy to get an admitted necrophiliac to admit to more, John. Though he wouldn’t use that term, he prefers _thanatophiliac_.” Even Sherlock Holmes gave a little shudder to that bit of grisly information.

“Williams had been abusing Toby for years. And Toby had, in turn, been abusing other boys. Especially Anand. A younger, smaller boy desperate to fit in. They played a _game_ , John.”

Disgust coils low in my belly.

“Williams taught it to Toby first. It mainly consists of lying very, very still.” He went quiet, looked down.

“So they taught Anand not to fight. And that last night, when he came to visit the other boys, they took turns with their _game_.”

I swallow hard. “And things got, oh god they did kill him...”

He nods, nearly whispering. “They liked hurting him. Lestrade managed to drag Toby in, he told us _everything_.”

Closes his eyes, sighs with frustration. “They tortured him. They took it too far, and he went along with it too long. One of the boys...crushed him. Pressed down intentionally. Until he couldn’t breathe. He was clawing at the carpet by then, gone breathless.”

He gave a shake of his shoulders, dark curls bobbing suddenly. “Toby told Williams where to find the boy. Toby knew they’d killed him, he knew all about Williams’ taste for lifeless boys. He wanted to please Williams. The boys knew he was dead and _they left him in a bloody cupboard_.”

“Two birds with one stone, eh? Have Williams cover up the evidence, and let him indulge his sick fantasies.” It was everything I could do not to picture the dying boy clawing at the industrial flooring, the life being crushed from him.

We stayed up many more hours, Sherlock telling me the story. As time passed, and he shared more, it was as though by telling it, he was letting it out somehow. The worry and exhaustion wore less heavily on him, he hugged me close. They always say a burden shared is halved, and it seemed true this time. He’d been carrying around the burden of Anand’s death for too long.

He shone when I complimented him; his connections baffled me, shocked me with their cleverness.

I started to think we’d see the sun make its way into the flat before we fell asleep but he finally tired of talking, or he’d actually shared the last of the most minute details. We were sitting up by then, leaning back against the headboard. As his story wound down, he reached so quickly for me that I was startled. He placed a hand below my jawline, stroked me gently. He stared at me so intently that I was sure he was looking right through me.

“I’m sorry, John. I know I’m absolutely beastly when I’m on a case.” He looked at me tenderly, trying to find words in a language he did not speak. “And I’ve been worse lately, this has been...worse.”

“Aye, I know. You’re a bloody pain in the arse all the time, that goes double when you’re on a case.” We both laughed a little.

“But this one,” I went on, “it has been hard. Been worse, like you said. But you’ve been brilliant. You’ve solved it!”

He gave a tired little laugh, then leaned in to me, rested his head on my shoulder. I stroked him absent-mindedly, his hair, his neck, his shoulders, fingers finding their way around his body.

Kissed him. There’s something about talking about death that makes you want to confirm you’re alive. He kissed back, seeking comfort instead of praise.

He slept fitfully, waking frequently. When he woke, he’d pull me closer if he’d drifted away. Neither of us were haunted by our dreams.

*

We’re drawn into a case with Mycroft. I expect fireworks and worse, but it’s resolved in a fortnight and there’s minimal friction (or interaction for that matter) between the Holmes boys.

Life takes on a certain regular irregularity, whilst Sherlock waits and watches the case of Anand’s killers unfold. Unfortunately, it doesn’t so much unfold as tear itself apart. Evidence is tested, the tests are inconclusive. Interviews go wrong, lawyers and parents get involved, then victim’s advocates. And always the media following such a grisly case. One bitterly cold morning, Lestrade calls to warn us that it may be impossible to press charges against the boys.

Sherlock turns aways all other work, stays home with his writing and his experiments. When I come home from the surgery that night, he’s sitting on the sofa staring blankly at his laptop’s screensaver. I take off my coat.

“Hmm. What, John?”

“Didn’t say anything. You alright then?”

“Yes of course. Working on my classification of...” Now the screen was back to life, illuminated. And it was an empty document. He closed the laptop with a hard click.

*

Sherlock wakes up suddenly beside me, sits upright then bolts from the bed before I can speak. He stumbles in the doorway, goes down on one knee, then rights himself, scrambles away. I hear him cough, then the door to the bathroom closes. I hear him cough again, then gag. Still getting my bearings, I walk to the door.

“Are you alright? Is there anything I can do?”

He retches again, a pitiful sound.

“I’m...I’m fine.” he says, with force. “A dream, it was just a dream.” I’m not sure if he’s speaking to me, or himself.

*

I wandered about the flat, mostly listening while Harry talked. I hoped I said the right things at the right times, I must have, because she kept talking. Still not drinking, holding down a steady job.

Sherlock walked in front of me as I sat on the stairs, talking, sorting through a handful of receipts and bills. I looked up, gave him a smile, covered the phone with my hand.

“I’ll be a minute, it’s Harry.”

He stepped closer, slim hips edging between my knees. He draws his fingers through my hair and I lean against him. Ignoring the phone, he brings his lips to mine, breathes the words “Love you."


End file.
